Blair: The artist's impression

Published 03 May 2007

What better way to sum up the Blair era than to ask some of our top artists to illustrate their feelings about the past decade? So here we present Ralph Steadman, Peter Kennard, Robert Del Naja and Stanley Donwood exclusively offering their interpretations.

"Dr David Kelly, RIP"
Woodcut on cherry plank. 2006
By Stanley Donwood

United Kingdoms 2007
By Robert Del Naja

By Ralph Steadman
I, like many others, looked to Tony Blair as a new spirit, and maybe, for a while, he was.
His most quoted interview phrase – "But putting that aside" –seemed a technique to convince himself, if no one else, that his opposite number in Washington could not possibly be as stupid as he appears to be, because he is so powerful. I do not want to be unkind to Tony because in a certain way I really like him.
Maybe he was never really a company man and maybe he should never have entered politics. But he did, for good or ill –and I will leave it there with my drawing.